Bard's Tale The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep - Director's Cut

[Infinitron]

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1091980/discussions/0/1639794651181262666/

Improved level art: We swept through every level and overhauled the lighting and texturing of our environments. Caith is now more beautiful than ever!

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1091980/discussions/0/1639794651181919536/?ctp=3#c1638669204729140572

So one thing for sure there is literally no light based shadows in the game. The option to change Shadow Resolution does nothing at all because there are no shadows in the game. There are some static shadows, which I think is just taxtures that been painted to look like a shadow.

So I am not sure this is so much a downgrade, but more of they need to fix stuff that it is actually working correctly, because there is definetly no shadows in the game at all.

This can't be right.

 

[Gord]

So... behold the DC in all its glory!

(All OldBT4 pics at high settings, no AA, textures on ultra, all DC pics on Ultra, no AA).

Spoiler

Old version:

New version:

Old version:

New version:

Old version:

New version:

Skara Brae looks pretty horrible now. Skara Brae below is a mixed bag, but not as bad as Skara Brae above. Still...

A few more pics here:
https://imgur.com/a/AtbtTts

 

[Curratum]

Don't mind Carls Barkley. He's just taking screenshots of the old game using none of the patched-in options and sliders, at medium settings, and comparing them to the DC ultra, which apart from the models, STILL looks worse.

 

[anvi]

Previous to last example, the prior two examples look way better in the new version. Old pic looks like glaucoma vision. New pic looks cartoonier but at least it is crisp and clear and good textures.

The last example looks better in the old version. The house with moss on it went from looking great to looking like a Nintendo game.

 

[Carls Barkley]

Looks a thousand times better

Spoiler

Original:

Directors Cut:

 

[Gord]

Those last two examples look way better in the new version. Old pic looks like glaucoma vision. New pic looks cartoonier but at least it is crisp and clear.

AA in old version was much too blurry, which is why I turned it of. Without AA it was actually a bit too sharp, but I still preferred that. See the comparison pictures I posted earlier. I guess the AA/sharpening might be improved in the DC, but since everything else seems to look much worse, I'm not sure whether that's a good tradeoff...

 

[Curratum]

Those last two examples look way better in the new version. Old pic looks like glaucoma vision. New pic looks cartoonier but at least it is crisp and clear.

AA in old version was much too blurry, which is why I turned it of. Without AA it was actually a bit too sharp, but I still preferred that. I guess the AA might be improved in the DC, but since everything else seems to look much worse, I'm not sure whether that's a good tradeoff...

Have you tried the old version with Temporal AA (blurry) but with the Sharpness slider maxed out? This actually produces very decent results.

 

[Gord]

Have you tried the old version with Temporal AA (blurry) but with the Sharpness slider maxed out? This actually produces very decent results.

Dunno, probably not - but then I finished the game before the last 2 or so major patches dropped, so I'm not sure if it was even possible at the time?

 

[Curratum]

Have you tried the old version with Temporal AA (blurry) but with the Sharpness slider maxed out? This actually produces very decent results.

Dunno, probably not - but then I finished the game before the last 2 or so major patches dropped, so I'm not sure if it was even possible at the time?

Oh, yeah, the sharpness slider was pretty late.

 

[Skdursh]

I can't believe I spent an hour pirating this for it to look substantially worse than the original. What a waste of bandwith.

 

[felipepepe]

That's amazing... the game's visuals where the one thing I really liked about the game (apart from the terrible graphics of the first area), yet they spend 1 year destroying it.

Now I want to check the credits, because no fucking way that's the same art director. Looks like the fired the dude that made the original and placed the intern in charge.

 

[Carls Barkley]

The original is brown, drab, and full of low res textures. The NPCs look terrible.

The Directors Cut is bright, vibrant, and sharp. NPC animations and faces received a major overhaul.

 

[Zombra]

Some stuff has improved (the sky looks great for example) but don't tell me those buildings don't look like fuckin' gingerbread. Whoever said it looks Unity-y was right. There's a kind of play-doh effect.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Carls Barkley]

Some stuff has improved (the sky looks great for example) but don't tell me those buildings don't look like fuckin' gingerbread.

The Directors Cut looks better because it's not chasing photorealism. Whimsical cartoony graphics will always be in style.

The original looks like modded Oblivion, and will age just as poorly.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Bard's Tale IV the Director's Cut: We not only added a "song of exploration" that removes the only exploration present in the game, but we also downgraded the graphics as an added bonus!

 

[felipepepe]

The Directors Cut looks better because it's not chasing photorealism. Whimsical cartoony graphics will always be in style.

The models are exactly the same, what the fuck are you talking about?

What they did was like those shitty ENB mods, where they just tweak the contrast and saturation. Yes, Skara Brae looks a bit better, before always looked terrible. But every other area I've seen so far lost a lot in quality, especially that fire tunnel that was used back in fucking 2015 to sell the Kickstarter. Yeah, they downgraded something from 2015. And the game STILL suffers from slowdowns in Skara Brae.

 

[Skdursh]

I'd like to cast my vote for Carls Barkley for most retarded newfag.

 

[Sacibengala]

Nice, now it can maybe run in my toaster.

 

[Carls Barkley]

The Directors Cut looks better because it's not chasing photorealism. Whimsical cartoony graphics will always be in style.

The models are exactly the same, what the fuck are you talking about?

The character models are not the same

 

[Agame]

I'd like to cast my vote for Carls Barkley for most retarded newfag.

AKA Safav Hamon, who has a long and illustrious history of retardation and dumbfuckery

 

[Country_Gravy]

The best thing about this game was the remakes of the originals.

 

[felipepepe]

The Directors Cut looks better because it's not chasing photorealism. Whimsical cartoony graphics will always be in style.

The models are exactly the same, what the fuck are you talking about?

The character models are not the same

Ok, they changed like 1% of them. Now please show me these "whimsical cartoony graphics" of yours.

 

[anvi]

Some of the graphics are way better, some of them are way worse. Now someone talk about gameplay changes.

 

[Skdursh]

Some of the graphics are way better, some of them are way worse. Now someone talk about gameplay changes.

Gameplay is essentially the same tedious card-battle bullshit. Within a few hours you have the tactics and attacks you'll likely use through the full game. The only draw about the game before was the environments, puzzles and to some people the story, but the gameplay is largely "meh". Not terrible, but not particularly exciting either.

If I ever actually decide to replay this I'll probably just stick to the original version.